


Time Shows Fools What They Really Are

by LeftHandOfSnarkness



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:27:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26451841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeftHandOfSnarkness/pseuds/LeftHandOfSnarkness
Summary: Allison doesn't understand how Diego can trust Lila. Luther thinks he understands maybe a little too much.--Or--Diego and Lila take a nap on the couch.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts
Comments: 4
Kudos: 114





	1. Allison

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the late, great, and gone too soon Justin Townes Earle. Song is "Time Shows Fools" off the album "Single Mothers Absent Fathers."
> 
> In this story, I just kind of ignored the whole Sparrow Academy thing. They are back in 2019, and back at the Umbrella Academy. I guess if you don't it to be AU, you can just imagine that they have managed to reset the right timeline and get back to their 2019.

> "Wish I could say that I found some way to sleep at night  
>  Wish I could lie but my weary eyes tell otherwise  
>  And I know when it comes to matters of the heart  
>  That time shows all fools what they really are"
> 
> -Justin Townes Earle, "Time Shows Fools"

Her brother is an absolute goddamn moron, Allison knows without a doubt. Sure, Diego had never licked a live battery like Klaus, or gotten himself stuck in the future like Five, or actually believed Dad’s lies like Luther, but still, she thinks, he might be the dumbest of her siblings. Because he either doesn’t recognize danger when he sees it right in front of him, or he doesn’t care, and either way, he takes risks that only a very, very stupid person would take. Like right now, when he is lying on the couch, sleeping like a baby, with a lunatic serial killer who had tried to kill them all snuggled up next to him.

When Lila had shown back up in a flash of blue light, weeks after they had gotten back, Allison’s first instinct had been to run- far and fast- away from her. But Diego had simply crossed the room to where she was standing and wrapped his arms around her. Her brother, who had held onto a grudge against Luther being Number One for almost 30 years, who had cut Vanya out of his life over her book, who said mean, brutal things first and thought about their impact later, if at all, didn’t seem to care that the woman he was in love with was a murderer, a Commission spy, someone who lied and manipulated and drugged people ( _him_ ) without a second thought. He didn’t seem to be afraid of her, not then, not back at the farm, and certainly not now. Because now she was curled around his side, black painted nails digging gently into the fabric of his shirt, face tucked into his neck, teeth half an inch away from his jugular.

Allison has to fight the urge to wake him up and ask what the hell is wrong with him. She succeeds mostly because she doesn’t want to have to talk to Lila (because she still wakes up with nightmares that feature the other woman’s grinning face and the words “ _I heard a rumor that you stopped breathing_.”), but she doesn’t leave. It’s stupid, she knows. She doubts Lila is going to murder Diego in his sleep, and knows, logically, that if she wanted to she probably had a lot better opportunities to do so than this one. She also knows that if she wanted to, there probably wasn’t all that much Allison could do to stop her. But no matter how aggravating Diego can be, he is still her brother, and she still feels protective of him, so she settles down on the couch across from them, waits for, well, she doesn’t really know.

Asleep, you would never guess how dangerous either of them are. They look entirely, unsettling normal like this, like they are just a regular couple that decided to take a nap in the middle of the day for lack of anything better to do. The right side of Diego’s face is pressed against the pillow, hiding the long scar that runs along the side of his head, and for once he isn’t wearing that stupid harness with all his knives sticking out of it. The kohl around Lila’s eyes is smudged a little, she’s wearing that silly beaded bracelet Diego had made, and her tiny body is tucked between him and the couch. If they were anyone else, Allison might even think that they looked cute. But they aren’t anyone else, and Allison has well and truly learned her lesson about underestimating people. So she sits there, staring at them, wondering if she looks hard enough she might see whatever it is that caused Diego to act like this.

She wonders, and not for the first time, if all of them are just incapable of having a normal, healthy relationship. Maybe it is genetic, or maybe it is because of how they had been raised, but none of them seemed able to have something good with someone good and have it last. Luther was in love with his own sister, both of Allison’s marriages had been built on lies (although one more out of necessity than the other), Klaus was mourning a soldier from the past he had watched die, Five was in love with half a mannequin, Vanya’s track record included a serial killer and a married woman, and Ben had never lived long enough to fall in love at all. Maybe, she thinks, Diego is just accepting ahead of time the ugly truths that they all ended up figuring out the hard way, in the end. Her brother had been right about one thing- he did know how to love dangerous people. And maybe to him, loving Lila was no different from loving any of them. She could kill him without breaking a sweat, but so could most of their siblings. Diego might be the best fighter out of them, in a fair fight, but having powers had always meant that none of their fights had ever been fair. Luther was always stronger, Five was always quicker, Ben was always more dangerous, and she was always able to turn the tide of any fight with a well-placed word. It strikes her that maybe out of all of them, Diego is the most used to trusting people that can hurt him. As if he had heard her thoughts, her brother frowns in his sleep, shifts slightly on the not-entirely-comfortable cushions. She watches as Lila moves, too, her hand clenching around the fabric in her fingers, pressing herself closer as if she is worried he might leave, but Diego turns until his forehead is touching hers, and they both settle back down and keep sleeping.

Suddenly, Allison feels tired, and more than a little foolish. Lila is dangerous, she knows, but she isn’t any more dangerous than anyone else in this house, and however it happened, she does seem to care about Diego, and doesn’t seem overly interested in hurting any of them, right now. She sighs, running her hands over her face, before getting up and leaving the parlor, closing the pocket doors carefully behind her so as not to disturb them. Her brother might be a moron, but Allison had learned a long time ago that she wasn’t always the best judge of what the right thing for people was. If he’s happy, that’ll just have to be enough for now. And maybe, him loving Lila isn't a dumb as it might first appear.


	2. Luther

> So gone are the days blessed by the ease of a brand new start
> 
> Lost in the wake drowned in pain of a broken heart
> 
> And it don't matter who you think you are
> 
> Time shows all fools what they really are
> 
> -Justin Townes Earle "Time Shows Fools"

Luther never thought he would be jealous of his brother. Growing up, Diego never had anything that Luther had ever wanted, didn’t have powers interesting enough to envy, wasn’t as tall, wasn’t as strong, stuttered, and fainted when he saw needles. Diego clung to Grace without seeming to fully realize that she wasn’t a real person, couldn’t actually return the love he felt toward their “Mom.” No, Luther had always known that he had drawn the better hand. He was Number One, their father’s favorite, tall and strong and the Golden Child. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, sure, but he knew who he was, _what_ he was, and there was comfort in that. When Diego had left, like a thief in the night not long after Ben had died, Luther wondered how exactly his brother was going to manage to survive on his own- with no money, no food, no job. And as far as he could tell in those years, Diego barely did. He mopped floors and boxed and joined and then got booted from the Police Academy. He lived in a gym and played vigilante at night and couldn’t keep a girlfriend. All that had confirmed in Luther’s mind that not only was he a better son than Diego, he was a damn sight smarter, too, because who the heck wanted to live like that?

Then that mission had happened, and everything in Luther’s life had changed, like the flip of a switch. And suddenly he was on the Moon, with a body he barely could recognize as his own, with a mission that would turn out to be pointless, with nothing but a plant for company. He spent four years of his life there, being the dutiful son to a father who couldn’t have cared less about any of them, and when he had returned, nothing was the same. And the evidence of how much everything had changed was lying on the couch in front of him. Diego and Lila were curled up on the ugly upholstery the way he had only ever seen people do in the movies or on TV; relaxed, at ease, happy. It was something he knew, in his mind, that normal people did, but not something he associated with him or his siblings. It isn’t something he was entirely sure was possible.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? It isn’t possible for him, not anymore, and maybe wasn’t ever. He doubts he would even fit on the couch like that, now, or that it would hold the weight of him and another person the way it easily does for Diego. He doesn’t know if he would know what to say to a girl who wasn’t Allison, doesn’t know if any girl would ever let him pull them close the way his brother does with Lila. And so yea, maybe he is jealous of Diego. Not specifically because of Lila, because lord knows she is ten pounds of crazy in a five-pound bag- but because they found each other, understand each other, love each other. Because despite the fact that Luther was supposed to be the leader, the one who always knew what to do, Diego had made the better choices.

When Luther had been faced with someone who threatened his family, he had locked up his own sister, even after she had come to them for help- convinced that he alone knew what was right. It was a moment of crisis, and he did exactly what their father would have done in the same situation- identified and tried to eliminate the threat. And as a result, the world had ended, something he knew, deep down, was as much his fault as hers. Even when he had landed in 1962 he had still convinced himself that anyone would have done what he had, at the time. But of course, Diego hadn't. When Diego was faced with a woman who was trying to kill them all, who at that moment had a knife to his chest, he hadn't even tried to fight her. Instead, his brother had told her that, while she might be dangerous, they all were, had told her there was a place for her, had wanted her to come home with them, with him. When she had left, he had stopped Luther from going after her. “Because, I love her,” he had said, as if that was all it took, as if she would come back to him instead of doing god only knows what with that suitcase.

And eventually, she had. She simply showed up one day in a flash of light, briefcase in one hand, covered in blood and dirt, and Diego had wrapped her in his arms so quickly none of the rest of them even had a chance to react. The world hadn’t ended, the timeline had remained stable, and they were all, more or less, alright, all because his snarky, often vicious brother had deciding that loving dangerous people was better than just locking them away.

He knows the others don’t understand what Diego sees in Lila. Five is always one second away from murdering her, Allison gives her a wide berth, and Klaus thinks she is mean. But Luther gets it, a little bit. He knows what it is like to be lonely, and knows how nice it would be to not feel that way anymore. Lila is bitter and wild and very, very dangerous, but so is Diego. So are all of them. You don’t always get to pick the things that make you whole, and if Lila does that for his brother, well, he can live with that. He can be jealous and still not be begrudging.


End file.
